


Nineteen Years

by josephina_x



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Nuke AU, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Dark fic, Gen, Nineteen Years Later, Nuclear Winter, Post-Nuclear War, WWTD, WhatWouldTeslaDo, not a happy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 04:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19349308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: The WWTD boys lied.





	Nineteen Years

**Author's Note:**

> Fic: Nineteen Years  
> Fandom: Gravity Falls  
> Pairing: n/a  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Spoilers: through the end of the main run of WWTD, and the first day of the summer session; up through June 19, 2019 of WWTD  
> Summary: The WWTD boys lied.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit.  
> AN: Here to give your anxiety brain a case of hives.
> 
> Note that all of the asks below are pulled / quoted directly from @fordanoia’s What Would Tesla Do Tumblr blog, from the 2019-06-19 session.
> 
> This fic is an AU of a Paranoid!Ford blog that [Noia](https://fordanoia.tumblr.com) (the mun) runs. Noia gave me too much anxiety brain in the first day of the special summer session, so I wrote this crazy little evil!fic dark!fic “nuke au” thing (Noia’s words, but I like the classification, so I’m stealin’ them! ha!) and tossed it at Noia’s head first, before posting it here, _because I could_ (muhahahaha! ;)
> 
> If you don’t read WWTD (also known as: [What Would Tesla Do](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com)) yet, then you really really should! If you need a summary of the main events prior to this follow-up long-awaited special summer session, then please [go here](https://fordanoia.tumblr.com/post/185693298058/whatwouldteslado-summary) and read Noia’s own very excellent summary!
> 
> NOTE BEFORE READING: This is a pretty dark fic. I have been informed from a reliable source that you are going to want to read some fix-it fic or fluff afterwards, so I recommend getting some on tap first before diving in. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

\---

Stanford Pines was startled out of sleep -- out of his makeshift hammock, in fact -- by the sound of an alarm going off.

He stared up, blearily and in shock from the concrete floor, glasses and hair all askew, as the alarm -- the _notification alarm_ \-- kept blaring, and Ford finally (even without the coffee that he still, even after all this time, wasn’t yet used to going without) _finally_ realized what it meant.

Ford shoved himself upright and rushed to the console, slapping the intercom switch and leaving it open so that Stanley would hear it, too -- _wherever_ he was at this hour -- and then, with trembling fingers, he picked up the device.

Holding it at an angle, to keep any of the cords and wires running to it from tangling, Ford flicked the screen active, and he stared at the screen.

Test number 16E8AA. The [test message](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185712852058/test-16e8aa) was there…

…and _also_ the “One moment.” [auto-send message](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185712950722/one-moment) that was only supposed to activate upon the ‘inbox’ receiving any asks.

Ford stared at it in shock. It had to be some kind of system error, just a glitch. He couldn’t believe…

He hit the message button, though, and…

His eyes widened and he felt a chill run over his skin, _because there were new messages waiting there_.

And, as he watched, the screen flickered as the system updated itself, again and again, as the messages of ‘welcome back!’ and ‘hewwo! :3’ and ‘Ford! Are you there???’ ‘GUYS!!! YOU’RE BACK!!!’

It was like a little colorful explosion had just entered back into his world, painting everything tye-dye and brilliantly with rainbow colors--

...It was a lie. It had to be a lie.

Stanley and Fiddleford. They _had_ to be messing with them. Their birthday was just-- they probably thought--

He knew it couldn’t be real. He _knew_ he had to be asleep. Or that maybe it was some kind of sick joke.

But he still couldn’t help but go along with it. He still couldn’t help but write, with tears filming his eyes:

\---

Excuse me, I’m not quite sure how to ask this properly, but _how are you all alive?_

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185712982427/excuse-me-im-not-quite-sure-how-to-ask-this)  
\---

Because it couldn’t be real. It had been--

Ford’s breath went thready as reply after reply came in. Questions. More hellos. More _actual greetings_. Odd attempts at… actual explanations? But mostly, just a bunch of cageyness and a handful of ‘what?’s and ‘I don’t know’s. They were avoiding the question.

...Well, of course they were. It was because the question was unanswerable.

Ford sat down roughly in his threadbare, worn-out swivel chair. They. _They_. These responses were too fast, too quick. It couldn’t be just Stanley and Fiddleford; had they really been able to enlist the help of _others_ for this-- this… the purposes of this terrible _charade?_

And then he recognized one ‘name’ that wasn’t simply anonymous. And Ford stilled in place.

\---

anistarrose asked:

It's only been about four months for us. How long has it been on your end?

_**It’s been nearly two decades.** _

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713040927/its-only-been-about-four-months-for-us-how-long)  
\---

This wasn’t right. This… this wasn’t right.

This was a sad, sick joke, that his brother and his friend were playing on him, but... he could play along for at least a little while with it, couldn’t he? Let them have their fun. Grit his teeth and bear it, and let them think that, at least for a little while, he had been completely and utterly fooled...

He recognized another name, and he pulled in a hard breath. That Fiddleford was doing this… that had to take planning, but...

...Oh, that was hardly good enough as an explanation. Really, were they even trying? Had they actually put any real effort into any of this, at all?

\---

alys-gay-parade asked:

I mean, to be fair, most of us were in our teens and 20s anyway.

Yes, but there were times when I put down the ALEX device for a couple minutes and a significant amount of time would pass in _your_ dimension.

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713105727/i-mean-to-be-fair-most-of-us-were-in-our-teens)  
\---

“Yes, Fiddleford, _do_ try to explain that, please,” Ford muttered to himself, as he rolled his shoulders and straightened up a bit in his chair.

Then he saw a message that _seemed_ to come from… oh, this was such a low blow. Using her name was bad enough, but… messing up a bit of simple math on purpose, to make it seem like it was not them as well.

He was completely terse in his reply. He couldn’t not be.

\---

fordtato asked:

Two decades? So it's 1992 on your end?

It’s 2001.

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713114072/two-decades-so-its-1992-on-your-end)  
\---

Ford clenched his jaw. This wasn’t right. They were… this wasn’t just some kind of sick joke, this was even worse than a fake psychic’s seance -- and he would know. This wasn’t just horrible anymore, this was beyond the pale. Using these people’s dead voices… as if they were all speaking to him from beyond the grave. --Stanley, _Stanley_ , at least, should know better.

Ford wracked his brain, trying to think of something, _anything_ that could justify Stan going along with this, with doing this to him. He knew how he felt about-- to do this was--

“Hey, Ford,” he heard, and he looked up at his brother, panting slightly from exertion. He was bright-eyed and completely awake and-- it looked like he’d rushed in from--

He was wet, from head to foot. He must have been past the living quarters of the fallout shelter, out in the main containment unit, doing his workout regime. They had the intercom units in there, but beyond that, nothing. It was too dangerous to leave anything in there anymore -- not for extended periods of time -- and they’d consolidated the majority of the working electronics to this section instead, years ago.

Ford stared up at his brother in disbelief.

And as Stan stared back down at him, the joy and excitement slowly drained from his face, as he looked at him in return. As he saw exactly how _un_ excited his own brother looked.

“How bad is it,” Stan asked him, walking forward and starting to frown.

Oh, no. --Whatever this was, Stanley _hadn’t_ been helping with it. Which meant that Fiddleford had either made a rather _more_ than significant breakthrough with his ‘talking AI’ project, that was supposed to help with the severe loneliness faced by most survivors, or he really had enlisted the help of a multitude of volunteers from around the globe who all must have been _lying_ to him for months.

...Except that that would have required Fiddleford to explain about the device to all those ‘volunteers’, and _who_ the people were who they’d been talking to on it -- which would have led to _where_ they were (and weren’t) and _why_ they couldn’t talk to them now -- and thus the portal-related technology that helped power it, and that was far _far_ too dangerous for any of the three of them to speak of to anyone else. Because Bill was only locked out of _this_ dimension,and if ever they tried opening a portal to _another_ one--

No. No, Fiddleford wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t risk that. Not even to try and save his own family. He knew the _real_ risks. He knew what death awaited them anywhere else.

Which meant...

It meant…

...Oh, oh no.

Stan gently plucked the device from Ford’s shaking hands, before he lost control of himself and slammed it into the console in front of him. Because Ford would have. Over, and over again.

Stan was frowning.

“What’d they do?” his brother asked him, as Ford shook in place. “Did that Helium guy--”

“Helix,” Ford supplied, wrapping his arms around himself.

“Helix, sure, that kid,” he heard his brother say, as he glanced over what was there, scrolling down on the messages. ‘What did he--” Stan stopped, as he reached the end of the messages.

And then he looked up at him, with a question in his eyes.

“Ford?” Stan asked him. “Ford, they’re back. We got ‘em back.” Ford shifted in place a little. “...Why aren’t you more happy about that?”

“They knew,” Ford said quietly, as Stan held the device back out to him, and he refused to take it. “They knew that--”

“Hey,” Stan said, pulling over a rickety old metal chair, made out of a few no-longer-useful pieces of shelving scraps, from the slowly-growing rack of empty shelves that no longer had any more supplies left on them. “You don’t know that. _We_ don’t know that.”

“ _Yet_ ,” Ford told him brother quietly.

“Yeah, _‘yet’_ ,” Stan repeated. “So why don’t you ask ‘em?”

He pushed the device at Ford again, and Ford grimaced, but this time he took it.

\---

Anonymous asked:

Wait, are you messing with us? Time seemed to progress slower for you all over there, (if you weren't lying about that...).

I’m not messing, so you can see why I wasn’t quite expecting a notification alarm to go off.

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713125252/wait-are-you-messing-with-us-time-seemed-to)  
\---

“I’m calling Fiddlenerd,” Stan said, shoving his chair over and then slapping the green ‘call’ button that Ford had rigged up for him. (His brother had wanted something simple, without ‘a lot of nerd attached’, which meant fully-automated.) “C’mon, pick up.” Stan jiggled his knee with a nervous sort of tension. (He always did these days.) “Pick up pick up pick up--” (People knew where Fiddleford lived now, and Stan always worried that--)

Ford looked down at the device, and he scrolled through the incoming messages, then decided to pick something relatively innocuous-looking, but also with a rather good number of teeth -- because since when did the months matter anymore?

They’d still made it a point to keep track, though.

\---

Anonymous asked:

Is it summer when you are?

Yes, it’s the middle of June currently.

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713151547/is-it-summer-when-you-are)  
\---

Fiddleford picked up, the video feed coming up on the dedicated monitor (from the dedicated frequencies) for their bunker-to-bunker communications.

“Stanferd and Stanley Pines. Is this some kind of a joke yer pullin’ on me?” was the first thing they both heard, out of their squinting friend.

Ford’s expression dropped.

Oh. Oh, no. It wasn’t Fiddleford. It wasn’t Stanley, and it wasn’t Fiddleford. Which meant...

Ford slowly looked down at the device.

“Guess not,” he heard Fiddleford murmur out in the background, as he typed.

\---

usuallyherdragon asked:

Ford!?!! Is that really you? It's been MONTHS!!!!! What happened? Is everyone alright? C.

Everyone is alright.

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713199447/ford-is-that-really-you-its-been-months)  
\---

It was only moments after sending it that Ford finally realized that what he’d just written was a lie.

‘Everyone is alright’ had meant everyone to him currently: himself, Stanley, and Fiddleford. They were his everyone, now. But what those people would see, and think, as they read that, only a few months later in time?

But back then, oh, back then… back then, nineteen years ago, there had been far more people to his ‘everyone’ that he and those ‘internet fae’ had all known. That they’d _gotten_ to know, through the Zodiac circle, and in the process of defeating Bill.

Defeating Bill. Ha. The idea seemed almost laughable now. They’d tossed the triangle back from their dimension, yes, but at what final cost?

Ford looked down at the device, and he let out a sigh. ‘What made them decide to reconnect?’ It had hardly been a decision; they’d told them all that they would be reconnecting it immediately. Had they thought they’d been lying?

“Should I tell them?” he heard from Fiddleford, who must be looking at his own cloned-copy of the feed.

“No,” Ford told him. “I will.” 

All sorts of angry, anguished thoughts rolled their way through Ford’s head, as he wrote down his reply. He tried to stick to the facts. The very most basic of technical facts.

\---

sci-fi-hero asked:

What made you decide to try to connect with us on the device again?

Fiddleford set it up. It’s an automated posting system.

Let me explain.

After sending a message to Bill all those years ago, Fiddleford then went to switch our transmission back to your dimension… except he couldn’t.

For whatever reason, the coordinates no longer worked. We theorized your dimension may have a constantly shifting coordinate system. 

Fiddleford set up this program to shift from dimension to dimension, with certain requirements, making posts with an alarm to alert when there was any responding transmission.

Test #16E8AA apparently was the lucky number. 

#;fp #1501354 in decimal form #sci fi hero

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713324417/what-made-you-decide-to-try-to-connect-with-us-on)  
\---

Ford felt tired.

“We actually got ‘em back,” Stan said. “Holy shit. --Fidds, it _is_ them, right?”

Fiddleford was typing at his computers, pulling up who-know-what, and peering at his screens.

“Looks to be,” Fiddleford said. “Let’s see now…”

Ford stared down at the device, as a few more asks were added to the pile. He stared down at it, and remembered… all those goodbyes. How all of them had seemed sure that they wouldn’t ever speak to him again. They’d known. They’d _known_ what was going to happen. They’d probably thought he was going to die in the blast, too. Hadn’t they?

They must have, mustn’t they? They’d seemed to know just about everything about everything else. Many of them had even warned him about the radioactive waste, at first; some of them had made such a big fuss about it, and at the time, it had seemed such a very small concern, in the face of Bill breaking through.

And then it had stopped feeling that way, after Henrietta’s prediction that the nuclear waste wasn’t going to be a problem. Not for what they were doing.

But predictions changed. Their fates had shifted before. And...

And their ‘friends’ on the other side hadn’t helped.

Ford let out a long breath. None of them had said anything in their final messages about what was going to happen next. What they must have known was going to happen. Only one or two had warned him that they believed they might lose contact for longer than they thought, but gave no specifics beyond that. Ford had discounted them at the time, too overwhelmed by their victory, and then Stan’s close-call and hospitalization, to really properly process _any_ of it…

Ford knew he was waiting too long; Fiddleford would want them to prolong the connection; they’d planned this out, what they were going to do, if ever they found this dimension again, and he needed to… to...

Ford picked a message at near-random, and gave about as bland and short a response as he could.

\---

fexiled asked:

so... did you see shrek

We don’t need to discuss shrek.

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713340462/so-did-you-see-shrek)  
\---

“Ford?” his brother asked him, sending him a long look. “You need me to take over for a bit?”

“I don’t…” Ford felt miserable. And angry. Miserably _angry_. They had lied to him, left out _pertinent_ , _life-saving_ information, and now they wanted to _meme_ something at him?!

“...Yes,” Ford said finally, holding out the device to him.

Stan took the device from him, and Ford dropped his elbows to the armrests of his chair and held his face in his hands.

“Hey, Fiddlenerd,” Stan called out casually to the fritzing video feed. “Look up ‘shrek’ for me, yeah? S-H-R-E-K. ...Be good to know a little more than they expect us to, for once,” Stan muttered, as he started typing on the device himself.

Ford scrubbed at his face for a moment, then looked up at his brother, as he ket on typing, scrolling, and typing.

“You know a ‘Scampy’? Stan asked him, and Ford grimaced.

“The scampfire,” Ford said, feeling tired, and as if he was being hauled by a rope at his feet into the past. He felt heavy with fatigue. “The walking campfire?” he tried next.

“Right,” Stan said, not looking away from the device. “Thing ate half your house.”

“One or two porch-posts at _most_ ,” Ford objected with a tired sigh, as he leaned back in his chair.

A few minutes passed, as Ford tried to regain control of himself, or maybe his sanity.

“...What are you writing to them about?” Ford asked his brother after awhile, and Stan grunted out, “What do you _think_.”

Ford blinked. And then he straightened up, tilting forward and upright again in his chair.

“You-- you’re _telling them?!_ ” Ford half-yelped out, feeling a terrible painful mixture of horror, anger, and shame. Because to tell them, just tell them of their biggest failure--

Ford shoved himself over and nearly wrested the device back from his brother. He would have, if Stan hadn’t tilted the screen towards him for him to see, as he grabbed his hand.

Ford reached out and grimaced as he scrolled back, then started reading from when Stan had taken the device back from him.

\---

Anonymous asked:

Hi!! How are all you guys? What's been happening? How's the town?

shit wait you guys dont even know do you

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713439682/hi-how-are-all-you-guys-whats-been-happening)  
\---

…Talk of birthdays, usernames, and kneecaps (Ford sent Stan a look -- they didn’t need to know that kind of personal information about him) and then...

\---

so uh we kinda messed up

some may say a lot? others like myself… would say an understandable amount all things considered

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713577162/so-uh-we-kinda-messed-up-some-may-say-a-lot)  
\---

you all uh remember that radioactive waste?

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713585902/you-all-uh-remember-that-radioactive-waste)  
\---

“It’s a movie,” Fiddleford cut in. “Shrek.”

“What?” Ford said, raising his head and looking up at the screen in shock.

Then he stared back down at Stan as he hit the ‘send’ button and--

\---

sci-fi-hero asked:

Hey Stan the man!!!!! What's your opinion of Shrek?

greatest movie ever 100% gold

ten out of ten and dont let anyone tell you otherwise

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713628357/hey-stan-the-man-whats-your-opinion-of)  
\---

“--What are you _doing?_ ” Ford told him.

“Gotta butter ‘em up, to get ‘em to talk,” Stan said casually. “You want to keep somebody on the other end of a wire engaged? You gotta make ‘em feel loved,” his brother told him, presumably from years of talking on the two-way radio with people both local and across the globe, trying to keep them all working together and _feeling_ together, instead of apart and isolated, and maybe instead willing to help each other out instead of simply--

“Came out in April of 2001, according to their own databases,” was what Fiddleford told them both next, with a bit of an undertone to his clipped words that Ford didn’t quite catch.

And then it hit him.

“--Did. Did you say.” Ford felt lightheaded, like the air exchanger had stopped working again. “Fiddleford. It’s a _movie_ that _came out in_ **2001?** ” Ford asked his friend in shock and disbelief.

And Ford got a terrible, horrible feeling, as he stared at the screen, at the grim (far, far too grim) look on his old friend's face, as Fiddleford looked away from the video camera on his end, looking instead to his own wide array of screens and electronics, and continued to type away at top speed.

“-- _Fiddleford?_ ” Ford asked of his friend.

"Really didn't happen there, huh," Stan said, as he continued his typing there on his device.

"Stanferd, do you really want to know?" was the tired, focused words that he got back next from the audio speakers in the console in front of him, and Ford stared at the screen, at his friend. Because Fiddleford only ever talked like _that_ when--

"Yeah," said Stan. "Let's hear it."

“Stanferd?”

Ford paused.

And Ford looked down over Stan’s shoulder at what he was typing, unable to give Fiddleford a reply.

\---

DARROWWYRLDE ASKED:  
Please dont tell me you drank or sold the radioactive waste

no!!! if you think about it too it wasnt really even our fault

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713638057/please-dont-tell-me-you-drank-or-sold-the)  
\---

ANONYMOUS ASKED:  
Oh, no. Stan, please tell me the containers didn't break and leak or anything. Or that anybody got arrested over them.

they kinda… exploded

or did some infusion megaradio thing or something like that

whatever you call it lets just say the town kinda went _bust_

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713662077/oh-no-stan-please-tell-me-the-containers-didnt)  
\---

Stan and Ford both froze as they read the next message that came in, and Ford felt so, so very cold.

And Ford made a strangled sound as his brother simply… _kept on typing_.

\---

ANONYMOUS ASKED:  
Do y'all have grand-niblings? Shermie's grandkids? Twins? A girl and a boy? Just... curious how royally we messed with y'all's timeline…

shit wait shermie lived in your dimension???

#;sp #holy hell man i #wow #Anonymous

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713682072/do-yall-have-grand-niblings-shermies-grandkids)  
\---

“Can’t freakin’ believe it,” Stan said, shaking his head. “Can you? ...Hell, at least he got to live over there. That’s good, right?”

“Stanley…” Ford said quietly, as several more asks came in, all in the same vein. All from people they knew. People who sounded like...

“Yeah, okay,” Stan said, like most people would crack their knuckles.

\---

FORDTATO ASKED:  
Stan... Stan. Are you saying the town got nuked?

heh hate to to break it to you tato but yup

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713714727/stan-stan-are-you-saying-the-town-got-nuked)  
\---

DARROWWYRLDE ASKED:  
Holy crad! When did that happen???? Are you safe? Did....did anyone....?

a few people i mean me and ford you know

then i mean people on the edge of town i think

#;sp #ha ford got overwhelmed and here im going now too #darrowwyrlde

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713748497/holy-crad-when-did-that-happen-are-you-safe)  
\---

“Stan…” Ford said, as his brother set the device down for a moment, and wiped at his eyes.

“Fuck,” Stan said. “It’s really _them_ , ain’t it.” Ford nodded, almost miserably. “Fuck.”

Ford quietly raised and hand and put it on top of his brother’s shoulder.

“Hell,” Stan said, then picked up the device again.

The number of messages they were getting now was almost scrolling off the screen before they could read them. Horror. Disbelief. Panic. Demands for information.

The denial, though, was the worst. Not being believed… the demands for something like _proof_ , almost.

\---

ANONYMOUS ASKED:  
very funny stan

yeah its kinda not fucking funny when youre living in it pal

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713763317/very-funny-stan)  
\---

not gonna answer ask about any psecific people

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713804217/not-gonna-answer-ask-about-any-psecific-people)  
\---

probably shouldnt have said anything 

i mean ford and me are doing pretty good

were not dead here afterall or nothing you know

#;sp #kinda surprised we made it this long

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713835442/probably-shouldnt-have-said-anything-i-mean-ford)  
\---

“It’s called _planning_ , Stanley,” Ford said, pushing away from him a little and feeling desperately tired.

Stan just read the incoming messages for awhile in a rather tense silence, as did Fiddleford on his own end, in his own bunker under his house in what had used to be California.

“...Damnit,” Stan said after another few minutes. “They don’t believe us.”

“Oh, of course they don’t,” was Fiddleford’s knowing (far, far too knowing) reply. “Just keep ‘em talking.

“Think I’m gonna lose ‘em if I keep this up,” Stan said, as he typed out another response.

“Keep what up,” Ford said looking over at him.

“Telling the truth,” Stan said darkly, with a grimace. “Hey, Fidds, they want to talk to you.”

“Ah noticed,” Fiddleford said, looking tense. “Keep ‘em busy.”

“Should I tell ‘em you’re dead?”

“You knock that right off, Stanley Pines,” Fiddleford told him. “That’ll just rile ‘em up more. I might need to talk to that whole ‘discord’ lot of ‘em later,” he said, using their own little inside joke name for them that they’d come up with, a long long time ago, from something a few of them had actually said to them once: a ‘discord’ of ‘internet fae’. “Be easier if you don’t.”

“I’m gonna make ‘em think that you’re dead,” Stan said with a grin, to a “Stanley Filbrick Fat-arms Pines, don’t you--!!” and Fiddleford stopped and let out an exasperated sigh, shaking his head, after glancing over at another of his monitors.

“Ford, they want to talk at you again,” Stan told him.

Ford closed his eyes and scrubbed at his face with both hands.

“Okay,” Stan said, and he turned away from him and kept typing.

“Huh,” Stan said after another minute or so. “Forgot about that.”

“What?” Ford said, looking over at him again.

“The time machine stuff,” Stan said, and Ford shoved himself over again.

Ford looked at the ask that had prompted Stan’s recall, and then at what Stan decided to reply to _instead_ next, in an almost off-handed sounding manner...

\---

ANONYMOUS ASKED:  
Okay. Okay. This is probably a not really helpful question, but... is there anything we can help with right now? Because this is... insane.

i mean ha not unless you got a time machine or something am i right

#;sp #pretty impossible to pull that off from over there though #Anonymous

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185713986082/okay-okay-this-is-probably-a-not-really-helpful)  
\---

...and they both looked grimly at some of the replies coming in.

“No Shermie, no grandkids, no time machine, huh,” Stan said quietly, sitting back in his chair. “Guess it’s good he got to live over there, though,” Stan added, as he wrote back to ‘xxxxtato’ explaining that…

\---

FORDTATO ASKED:  
But wait. Ford literally said "everyone's alright."

i mean everyon thats alive is pretty alright if you ask me

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185714011687/but-wait-ford-literally-said-everyones)  
\---

Stan gave him a bit of a side-eye over his shoulder, and Ford winced.

“I wasn’t thinking,” Ford said quietly. “I’m…” _‘sorry…’_

“It’s fine,” Stan said.

Then they both stared down at the newest ask, and…

“...They knew where he was.” Ford said slowly, with a sinking feeling and a growing anger. “They _knew_ \--”

“No, they don’t,” Stan told him, frowning down at the device. “Didn’t,” he corrected himself with a grimace. “They don’t say anything about Jersey in there, anywhere.”

Ford looked over at him. “They knew we were in Gravity Falls, and they’ve called us ‘Jersey boys’ before.” He heard an odd sound -- a snort? -- from the speakers, and looked up at Fiddleford. “They did. And they knew that we weren’t-- they _knew_ that we wouldn’t be able to reconnect!” Ford told them both, pushing away from Stan. “They knew, _and they didn’t tell us--_ ”

“No, they didn’t,” Fiddleford sighed out over the speakers, and Ford only grew angrier as his brother added, “Ford, even Handrietta--”

“ _Hen_ rietta,” Ford stressed, getting up from his chair and starting to pace.

“--the witch-lady didn’t know,” Stan told him. “She didn’t see it coming, what was gonna happen. _Nobody_ did. Let it go. --Fidds, I’m gonna tell ‘em I was lying about everything, okay? None of ‘em are listening to me anymore,” he said. “Pretty sure they’re gonna tune out and turn off if I keep this up.”

“I’ve got things running a bit on their own now,” Fiddleford said, “You do what you need to, to keep ‘em online. Connection won’t stay stable enough for the throughput we need, otherwise.”

“Stanley, that’s not--” Ford stopped in his pacing right next to him and stared down at what Stan had just sent.

\---

LILYRIGHTER ASKED:  
I thought you said the explosion took out Gravity Falls. How'd it affect Shermie wherever he was?

hey nice catch

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185714063292/i-thought-you-said-the-explosion-took-out-gravity)  
\---

And Ford felt cold as he watched the next spate of incoming messages, and not a single, solitary ‘fae’ contested the accuracy of what Stan had just implied with that statement. They _all_ poked at him, to a one, complaining about how Stan had led them on, how he’d lied to them, how no, they hadn’t been fooled...

And not a single, solitary one of them asked about the war -- the shortest war in history -- and the nuclear winter that had followed.

“That…” Ford felt faint. They had almost, none of them, _never_ came to the same consensus on anything that was flat-out _wrong_ before. Not like this.

And then Stan made it worse by saying, “I told ‘em the blast was 18 or 19 years ago. Shermie coulda been visiting here. He couldja been caught up in the blast here, too, if he had.” He held up the device to Ford. “They didn’t know about you sitting next to me in the car, y’know, either.”

“That was the _Bill_ \--” Ford began quietly.

“It was all of ‘em,” Stan told him. “None of ‘em guessed. Because that’s what they were doin’, Ford. Guessing.” Stan turned away from him. “They don’t know nothin’ about what’s goin’ on, unless we tell ‘em,” Stan said, as he typed out another reply, solidifying the lie.

\---

ANONYMOUS ASKED:  
We deserved that

yeah you did

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185714099737/we-deserved-that)  
\---

“But we sure as hell didn’t,” Stan muttered out, then raised his voice and said, “Hey, Fidds. Jump in for a minute, willya? Help me sell this thing.”

Fiddleford sighed, then said, “Fine,” and he swapped out one keyboard for another.

“...Sell this thing?” Ford asked him weakly under his breath, as he sat back down.

“They don’t want to believe it, and they won’t,” Stan said. “Not anymore. You start with the truth, and somebody thinks it’s a lie? --You switch to telling them that, yeah, you got me, the lie is true? --They’ll never believe the truth again after that,” Stan told him, to a sinking feeling in Ford’s chest. “They’ll think I’m just ‘joking around’ on them again, if I try to say, ‘no, hey, I was actually telling the truth before, _really_ ’.”

“But we won’t be able to ask them--” Ford began.

“Won’t help,” Fiddleford said as he typed, “And we won’t need to. They’ve got nothin’ securing this thing of there, far as I can see. It’s all green here,” Fiddleford told them. “You folks just have to keep ‘em all online. --Stanley?”

“Got it,” Stan said, as he typed out next…

\---

hey everyone gets one or something like that right?

couldnt really get back at some of you without getting back at everyone though, some of you didnt deserve that but sue me i couldnt get any revenge 19 years ago

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185714184432/hey-everyone-gets-one-or-something-like-that)  
\---

And Ford felt sick.

“This… this _isn’t a game_ ,” Ford said angrily, “Where we just exchange lies for more lies.” His brother looked over at him. “We… we can’t just _lie_ to them like this,” Ford told both of them.

“Ford, make up your mind,” his brother said almost coldly. Fiddleford remained silent.

“You wrote it yourself, Stan,” Ford told him. “They’ve helped us before. Some of them. Surely--”

“Gimmie a sec,” Stanley said, and then wrote several replies _lying_ about the upload rates and the connection and the ability for them to send _anything at all_ , even the sorts of pictures that they’d been able to send previously, properly anymore.

Lying about sending pictures of grand-niblings _they didn’t have_...

“Ha, Helix,” Stan said next, and Ford felt angry as he saw Stan’s posts, and the supposed ‘teenager’s reply, and Stan’s ‘pretend’ attempt to block him, and…

Ford physically snatched the device away from his brother and wrote an immediate quick and angry [rebuttal](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185714513312/he-got-knee-surgery) when Stanley brought up his kneecaps again. He’d _gotten_ them fixed at the hospital, right after that Jimmy Snakes lunatic had--

And he couldn’t help but send another [hurried response](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185714557882/ford-im-serious-im-missing-the-slots-for), to similar news a different old friend, out of pure reflex, just to drive the point home. (Also, scholastic achievement was to be congratulated. He knew what level of work that took.)

And then Ford slapped the device back down onto the console in front of him.

“We need to discuss what we’re doing here, _now_ ,” Ford told them both.

“We’re getting what we can,” Fiddleford told him over the speakers, “Because they sure ain’t gonna be able to help us out now.”

“You don’t know that!” Ford said to him hotly. “You don’t know--”

“--We don’t exist there,” Fiddleford told him, staring straight at the video camera on his end.

Dead silence reigned for about a minute.

“...What?” Ford said, when he got his voice back.

“We can’t ask for help,” Fiddleford said. “We don’t exist over there. We can’t get in contact with our other selves, because--”

“That _doesn’t_ make any sense,” Ford said, then stopped himself, pinching the bridge of his nose. “ _Fine_ ,” he said next. “Fine. We’ll just have to ask them to get in contact with them _for_ us--”

“They can’t.”

“--to let them know it’s an _emergency_ ,” Ford continued, feeling stressed, because at least one of two of them _had_ claimed that they knew--

“Stanferd, _they can’t_ ,” Fiddleford told him.

Ford shook his head. “They were able to get in contact with _us!_ ” Stan was glancing between them uneasily.

“No,” Fiddleford said calmly but firmly, “ _We_ got in contact with _them_. Wasn’t nothin’ they did on their end. It was us. It was all us.”

“But--” Ford shook his head. “But then _how do they know so much about us!_ ” He looked to the screen with Fiddleford’s face on it, directly into the video camera they had right above it, feeling desperate. “They must-- are they like _Bill_?” Ford asked next, starting to feel a little uneasy ~~and working towards paranoid~~. But… that didn’t make any sense, either. Because Stan was right; there were so many things that they _didn’t_ know, that they _hadn’t_ gotten right--

"Stanferd, do you _really_ want to know?" Fiddleford said, sounding tired, as he looked to the camera. “Because--”

“ _Yes, **of course** I do!_” Ford thundered out at him. He stood there a moment, fists at his sides, breathing heavily. _Of course_ he wanted to know. Of course he did! It had been _killing_ him, for _years_ , literal _decades_ of not knowing! Not having any idea of-- of whether they were all truly working for Bill or not. The number of times that he’d read and reread those messages at this point -- even the ‘Bill’ ones, now, that had been painful, truly painful -- searching _desperately_ for a greater meaning. Trying to understand. Trying to understand what they had missed. Trying to understand _why_ they had decided not to tell them. _Why_ they had done the worst thing imaginable, and kept their lie of omission -- _exactly_ as Bill had done to him before -- for something like at least an entire _year_ on their end, and-- and…

“They don’t think we’re real,” Fiddleford told him soberly.

Ford stared at the screen. “Fiddleford, we’ve been over this--” Just because these ‘fae’ (but actually probably simply human) people might not all think that their situation was the complete and god’s-honest truth of what had really, _actually_ been going on over here, did _not_ mean that they all thought that...

Fiddleford tapped a few keys on his screen, and a different image came up to replace his face -- a direct feed from another of his computer screens.

“They think we’re not real,” Fiddleford’s voice continued on, as he cycled through and updated the overlay. “They--”

“...There’s a _TV show_ about us?” Ford said, staring stunned at the brightly colored… cartoon images? How popular _was_ this other-dimensional him?

“ _They think we’re fictional characters,_ Stanferd,” Fiddleford’s voice cut through harsly. “ _We don’t exist there_. --Hornswaggle. I’ve tried looking through twelve different map servers at this point,” Fiddleford told him, “And _none_ of ‘em -- count ‘em, _zero_ , **none** \-- have had, or have _ever_ had, Gravity Falls, Oregon on any of ‘em all at _any_ point,” he was told.

“But… but they...” Ford whispered out. He stared at the screen in utter disbelief, at all of the changing, very-wrong maps that Fiddleford was showing them.

And then he shook himself, gathered himself up, and told his old friend: “This isn’t funny.”

“Do you hear me laughin’?” Fiddleford shot right back at him.

“This isn’t _funny_ , Fiddleford,” Ford repeated angrily.

“West Coast Tech exists,” Fiddleford continued on saying, “But it’s got a new name now. These people managed to live through the 80’s without starting off a nuclear holocaust,“ Fiddleford told him next, as Ford went red, and then white, “Probably because an explosion didn’t go off at the coast line of _their_ own backyard three days after that nuclear dearmament rally in New York.”

Ford felt truly ill at this point. He could feel his gorge rising.

“Somehow managed to end up with some kinda fascist dictator for a president, though, and a whole bunch of ‘global warming’ climate change stuff going on that nobody seems to be taking the _least_ bit seriously for some reason,” Fiddleford told them both almost conversationally next, with a boatload of dry sarcasm underneath it all, and Ford felt the distinct urge to cover his ears with his hands and just scream.

“We really ain’t there?” was what Stan asked of Fiddleford next.

“No,” Fiddleford said. “Not ever. --Anything I’ve been able to find relating to our names goes back to that TV show, some massively-popular _New York Times best-selling_ book-copy of your third journal,” he told Ford, “And a couple a’ comic books, too. That’s it. --No theses, no awards, no conference or journal papers in either of our names; there’s just _nothing_. We were never there,” Fiddleford told them, and it sounded almost like a death knoll. “Technology ain’t made as much of a leap as I thought it would either, for them not havin’ a nuclear winter going on that’d screwed up just about everything,” Fiddleford added at the end of things, as almost a toss-away comment. “Robots aren’t very far along, either; I’ve built better ones outta scrap in my own backyard. Some of this wireless stuff looks pretty interesting, but what with the radiation interference, it’d all just be next to useless here; we built better stuff than what they have now, for that.”

“Damnit,” Stan said. “So, what, all of this was just useless?” he demanded out of Fiddleford. “If they never had you two nerds _or_ a Gravity Falls, then… that’s no portals, or creepy explodey mailbox, or time machines, or anythin’ else!”

“And no Bill,” Fiddleford said next. “Not a real one, anyway.”

“Then what are we even tryin’ to get _out_ of ‘em, anyway?” Stan said in exasperation. “If you two nerds ain’t there, and they don’t know anything that can help us with fixing things _here_ with what the damn demon did to us, and you two are smarter than all of them combined, then what the hell do they have that you nerds can even work with?!”

“--Forty years of _worldwide_ development and knowledge,” was what Fiddleford shot back with rather quickly, with an… actual smile on his face. “These people aren’t living in the thousands, scrambling to survive, Stanley. They’re in the _billions_ , a _lot_ of smart people have been working for _decades_ on everything from computers to medicine to _recycling_ every kind of material out there, to _making_ their own oil from some kinda algae, and more! --And they’ve got damn near everything they have connected online to this internet of theirs,” Fiddleford told them with glee. “Give me a day or two -- no, better make it a week, just to be on the safe side -- and I’ll have a copy of every single thing that they have in every last one of their systems!”

“So?” Stan said, scratching his head. “How’s that supposed to help us out _here?_ We don’t got the supplies to do hardly anything with, and all that stuff’s over there--”

“Not necessarily,” Fiddleford said. “Ford, do you remember what I said about the seed bank?”

“...Yes?” Ford said, and he frowned at Fiddleford in confusion. “But what does that have to do with anything?” He didn’t follow.

“That ‘Scooter Spectre’ thing, do you two remember what they said?” Fiddleford asked them next. “Without looking at the logs. I want to make sure I ain’t misrememberin’ this--” because Fiddleford had never really been entirely certain whether Bill might or might not have done anything to damage their own local logs at some point during their last performance, though Ford had always thought not. “What did they call theirs?”

“Uh,” said Stan. “Some… ‘Ghost Rider’ thing? With a motorcycle?”

“And their amazon-warrior lady?”

Ford frowned. “...Wonder Woman, I believe?”

“Bingo-bongo,” Fiddleford said, with a grin in his voice, and two things popped up on the screen.

“I… I really don’t see the relevance, here, Fiddleford,” Ford told him, as he adjusted his glasses and peered at the information.

“That’s because you’re not the one who’s crawling all over these people’s ‘world wide web’,” Fiddleford told them next, with suppressed laughter. “Boys, this one _isn’t_ from anything to do with that silly old TV show. This is something of _theirs_ ,” Fiddleford told them., “Wholly and completely theirs. --Got nothing to do with these crazy fictional ‘us’es, at all.”

It took Ford a moment.

And then he sat down roughly in his chair, tears in his eyes.

“Where is their seed bank located,” Ford asked of his old friend in wavering tones, who just about cackled and then spouted out the latitude and longitude down to the degrees, minutes, and _fractions_ of seconds, to Stanley quickly grabbing up a pencil (out of habit) and immediately scrawling it down.

“Shit,” said Stan, tossing the pencil back on the console, looking a little blown away himself. “You think the one we got is in the same place, too?” He was already reaching for their last, best fold-out map. Almost all of the records that humanity had had before the nuclear war had been lost; with what little they knew, very little, _too_ little, they simply hadn’t been able to find it -- it had been too risky to stay out there in the worst of the radiation zones, under that much exposure, for too long.

“Might be, might be. --And that’s just the big one that we’d all _heard_ about,” Fiddleford told them next. “These folks have a whole online encyclopedia, here. Boasts about havin’ almost six _million_ articles in English,” Fiddleford told them, making Ford’s head spin, “And a bunch of others translated out, too. And I gotta tell you two,” Fiddleford told them next, as he put up another screen of information, labeled simply ‘Seed bank’, “We’re not talkin’ a dinky paragraph or two here for each entry in this thing.” He scrolled the screen down slowly enough that they could read names, dates, pick out bits of information. It was at least four or five screens full of information, _not including_ the ‘references’, ‘further reading’, _and_ ‘external links’.

“It’s ‘community edited’,” Fiddleford said next. “All-volunteer. All the donations go to server-hosting, bandwidth and byte-space. Just, random people signing up for an account, and helping to toss up what they all know, and keep it all up to date, and make it right...” Fiddleford put up another screen, a search box with terms listed in it and… ‘online scientific journals’, oh good lord, and the screen said 388 _million_ results were returned.

Ford dropped his head down in his hands. He damn near began crying.

“Oh. Oh, god,” Ford said. Other people. Other people _who cared about knowledge_. They’d all been just scraping by for so long, trying to survive, trying to make it that one extra day, looking at the dwindling _limited_ supplies on their all shelves that they couldn’t replace. But this… _this_...

Other people, just _living_ , who had the free time to go off and just share knowledge _for the joy of it_ , for _others_ to use…

People who just decided that it was a good idea to put all that knowledge online to share. People who didn’t want to be bound to the restrictions of paper anymore, because electricity wavelengths were so much easier to use to store it all and send...

“Hey,” he heard his brother say, and he looked up. Stan was holding out the device to him. “Write ‘em a long thing to send. They’re gonna get antsy, not hearing from us for awhile. Yeah?”

Ford gingerly took it from him. He knew his brother was just trying to distract him, but… the ‘fae’ really _were_ a good distraction. (They always had been.)

“What should I tell them?” he asked.

“Hell, I don’t know,” Stan said. “Maybe copy over a couple of your old entries for ‘em? Let ‘em know what’s been going on?”

Well, yes, Ford might otherwise think of doing that with some of his local entries from his log, but the problem with that was… “You told them that--” Ford began, then sighed. “I can’t copy anything over. They’ll think that _I’m_ the one who’s lying to them, now.”

“So? Generalize it, then,” Stan said. “Just, y’know, remember to leave out all the bad stuff. Don’t explain things. Just the facts. --Hey, Fiddleford,” Stan said next, pulling over a keyboard, “Think you can drop me a line so I can look at some of this stuff, too? Might be good to have a non-nerd lookin’ at things, not just you.”

“Right,” Ford said quietly, as he stared down at the device. “Just the facts.”

He began typing.

And eventually, he tapped Stan on the shoulder, and showed him what he’d written.

“Yeah, sure, go for it,” Stan said, sounding half-distracted, as he looked up at the video screen. (Apparently, Fiddleford had just decided that the best way to tackle the issues was to capture all of Stan’s keyboard output remotely, and then show the associated feed on the video screen that had originally been showing Fiddleford himself.

Ford looked at him.

And then quietly hit send.

\---

ANONYMOUS ASKED:  
So y'all going to at least fill us in on what's *really* been happening for the past 19 years?

Allow me to summarize as a lot has happened these past 19 years.

My house was rebuilt. I went into some pure traditional studies for a few years. Stan set up doing tours during that time. After a certain point though we bought a boat and went sailing. We really should have done it earlier.

During that time we helped Fiddleford with checking in on his Tesla Towers across the world. Stanley started working on his comics again back then as well, and I’m rather proud to say that he went onto official publication five years ago.

Fiddleford went back into inventing and became quite a big name, actually. His personal computers were significantly more advanced than the competition.

I’ve been working on a couple different things, but I’ve made significant headway on a conservation project for anomalies within Gravity Falls!

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185714741117/so-yall-going-to-at-least-fill-us-in-on-whats)  
\---

The house had only taken a few weeks to rebuilt. Boyish Dan had been rather efficient on his own, and they’d had the chance to retrieve a significant amount of his emergency cash from the bunker to pay for even more lumberjack help, so what was to have taken months had been completed even faster. The traditional studies for years afterwards -- ever since, really -- had been necessary, because after the nuclear explosion had gone off… there were no more anomalies in Gravity Falls. And they’d all had nothing more pressing to do than focus on finding and trying to save any other survivors, and carry out the most basic of tasks concerned with survival.

Stan had done ‘tours’ of the house first, from a wheelchair, for a few months. His legs had slowly begun to improve, but he’d still been in that wheelchair when Ford had insisted on carting him down to the bunker with him, to look around and give him his opinion on the place, and what might be done to improve both its form and its function for longer periods of time. And yes, Stan had complained mightily, especially in making the trip going down all of those stairs, but…

It had been June 15. Three days prior, on June 12, 1982, there had been a protest in Central Park, New York, with more than a million people demanding for the Cold War arms race to be de-escalated -- nuclear arms in particular. And on June 15, 1982...

...somehow, as far as he and Fiddleford and Stan had been able to reconstruct (or guess at, later, from the eye-witness accounts of one of the few people who hadn’t immediately died from radiation poisoning, only done so less than a week later)...

...one of Bill Cipher’s ‘sleeper’ deal-agents had driven up to Gravity Falls, Oregon, in a truck, with several hundred pounds of explosives, driven it out on top of the exact area under which they had (safely) buried all of that nuclear waste material, encased in concrete, for _eventual_ safe decomposition on its own, as it decayed...

...except instead of _that_ happening, the explosion vaporized the ground, concrete, and material below it and tossed it all up into the atmosphere in one gigantic cloud of radioactive material…

And apparently the US had thought it was some sort of Soviet-led attack on US soil, and started World War III, the final explosions of which finished going off only a handful of minutes later.

Happy Birthday to them.

At first, they’d been trapped down in the bunker, because all of the safety precautions had _worked_ and locked them both in, inside the fallout shelter. Ford, frantic, had managed to hail Fiddleford at his home in Southern California via the emergency-installed phone line, but he’d barely managed to talk to him for a minute, before Fiddleford had cut off cursing, and left the line hanging, and then dead.

Fiddleford had managed to grab his wife and child, and make it to his own (even more impressive) fallout shelter under his house in time. _Barely._

California had been hit hard, though, and anything above ground level in the area was wasted. _Gone_ , really, they’d learned after the fact.

Ford had managed to get on a radiation suit and get up to ground level, to realize in horror what had happened, and manage to rescue a few odd stragglers -- mainly, a logger or two who’d been in the woods at the outskirts of town, at the _opposite_ edge of town, away from the wastelands where they’d buried the waste material -- to grab them up and take them back to the bunker with him.

Oregon had been hit first. It wasn’t hit again.

It wasn’t a few days before the matter from the _other_ countries in Asia finished making its way across the planet, buoyed along by the natural wind- and water-currents, to hit the parts of the west coast that hadn’t been hit directly. And before that was done, the rest of the central U.S. had been hit by what had spewed up into the air at the west coast, moving eastward.

The eastern and western US had been hit directly. Jersey was _less_ than a hole in the ground; it was a crater in the seabed now. Every major coastal city had been hit.

What had happened in other countries, they’d had to extrapolate back from Fiddleford’s simulation models and their own measurements.

There were very few survivors.

Most people had not had the time, knowledge, or resources to properly prepare for an actual nuclear holocaust or other major catastrophe. Some people simply hadn’t dug deeply enough; some had only stored away enough supplies for a few weeks, or merely a month.

Some had forgotten to store enough water. Some hadn’t had their air supply fully filtered out, and completely isolated from the rest of the outside world.

Many had no capability to recycle _anything_ that they had inside.

And several… Ford still had nightmares about some of the bunkers they’d cracked open, on a mission to try and retrieve people, and seen the horrors that those poor, trapped people had...

Ford let out a long, tired sigh.

\--Fiddleford’s Tesla Towers operated on the nuclear radiation still hanging around in the atmosphere. They supplied power locally, to those underground bunkers still in operation. --They _also_ served as communication hubs and relays, but the main purpose they’d sold them on to the locals wherever Ford and Stan had encountered them, had been the ‘free’ energy supply.

Stan had been the ‘radio host for the masses’ since the time they’d gotten the first one of those tower stations set up. Everybody knew him now; literally everybody. --He still ‘gave tours’ of things, as part of a radio show he did weekly, but… mostly, they were all pulled from old magazines, and his own memory, not just a travelling log of what he and Ford were doing, going out sailing and trying to find people. Now, it was just for keeping people entertained. Keeping them thinking about the good times, and what perhaps _could be_ again. (Keeping them as sane as possible under their terrible circumstances, really.)

Ford regretted not sailing with Stan earlier, truly. The radioactive wastelands that they had encountered had made what they were doing anything but a pleasant, happy, and fun-filled adventure. They’d been on the communicator with Fiddleford every day -- nearly every hour -- giving status updates, checking weather conditions, taking stock of everything they could see and hear...

Stanley had taken up comics again because he’d been bored. It had been something to do. And he’d wanted to find a way to give a little more color to the world, to everything. Fiddleford had managed to whip up an electronic printing press for him, and for awhile, every time they’d taken a trip outbound, to check up on the Tesla Towers and help perform the on-site maintenance at them that the people _living_ at those sites simply didn’t or couldn’t do for themselves, they’d always brought copies and copies of them with them.

They’d stopped doing that, once they’d run out of ways to properly clean the material they needed, to make new ink and paper. They would have had to start dipping into essential supplies, and they couldn’t…

It was fine, though. Fiddleford had figured out a better, higher-bandwidth way to send actual video imagery via the Towers. They mainly used it for their own purposes -- fully-encrypted, end-to-end -- and others generally only tried using the video channels for emergencies, but sending still images was hardly a burden on the system. So multiple paper copies were no longer a must; Stanley had only just needed to make one of each from there on in, and use one of Fiddleford’s digital cameras to take pictures of them to send out.

The first comic book had been only five pages long. The fifth had been well over a hundred.

Fiddleford himself had just started gaining traction for his company when World War III went down. Now, he truly was the only game in town, when it came to personal computers and other technology.

Ford himself had kept himself busy. Very, very busy. He found that if he _didn’t_ keep his mind working on some sort of problem for too long, that his thoughts drifted to subject that were best kept… out of his thoughts and mind. (Sometimes, he truly wondered if he’d done the right thing. If anything he’d _ever_ done had, or could be considered, ‘right’.)

His ‘conservation’ project was… something of a joke. The blast here hadn’t been as physically destructive as any of the others (and no-one had seemed to find a need to ‘bomb’ the same place twice), so… quite a good number of skeletons of dead and decaying anomalies were quite literally up for grabs above their heads. So Ford had started something of a ‘museum’, as it were...

Some days he felt proud of it. Some days he looked around at all of it, all of the dead things there, and just felt sick.

Today _had_ been one of the better days, but now?

...Ford sighed, as he looked over the next set of incoming messages. He didn’t really know _what_ to think, or feel, anymore.

He showed every post to Stanley before he hit send. He felt awful as he [lied](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185714966152/how-is-scampy-doing) about the fate of Scampy, trying to act as if nothing was wrong.

...Well, the memory of the little scampfire was still endearing, as always. It wasn’t _entirely_ a lie. Not entirely.

When asked if he knew what happened in their timeline, [he demurred](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185715038137/you-know-we-never-told-you-everything-about-what). He didn’t want to talk about what-could-have-beens, for those _nonexistent_ selves, because then he’d be able to dwell on each and every exact thing that he’d done wrong. Because then he’d _know_ what he had done wrong, well beyond trusting Bill in the first place.

And Ford just wouldn’t be able to take that knowledge.

\---

BUTCHSHAPESHIFTER ASKED:  
do nyall have any questions for us?

I understand that it’s only been a few months for all of you. Has anyone’s opinion changed on us?

Does that question make sense?

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185715208427/do-nyall-have-any-questions-for-us)  
\---

He could help but torture himself by asking the question. He regretted it immediately -- he didn’t _want_ to hear from any of them the truth, that they didn’t think he was real; _or_ the lie, that they thought… anything at all of him -- because they thought _this_ \-- his entire reality and existence -- was all just some made-up… lie.

He kept his responses brief, and simple. He couldn’t think of much to say to the otherwise-cheery (and likely meant to be) tongue-in-cheek declaration of ‘faedom’ by [one asker](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185715307677/well-shoot-come-to-think-of-it-you-all-have).

“Is it 2019 there?” he asked his brother, to which he got a reply from Fiddleford instead of, “Yep! June 19.”

Ford sighed. At least they hadn’t been lying about _that_...

“Stanley, please take over for a bit,” he asked of his brother, and Stan shoved back his chair a little bit and gestured at the keyboard, as he complied.

Ford shoved himself forward, and gingerly took up the keyboard. ...It seemed he had several search engines to choose from, from Stanley’s notes. His brother had been jotting down useful information on a notepad nearby, which he’d picked up the habit of rather quickly, after the first few days of being stuck in a hospital bed, and the a wheelchair, so many years ago. It had stuck with him rather persistently since.

After awhile, Stan asked of him, “Hey, gimmie a soundtrack list of songs from that Shrek movie, yeah?”

Ford sighed and pulled up the list.

“Yeah, I’m goin’ with ‘All Star’,” Stan said, typing something up.

“Stan, what are you doing,” Ford asked of him, with no small bemusement.

“Keepin’ up the lie,” Stan told him straight-out, which had Ford slowly losing his smile. “Hey, look up the lyrics, too. Should probably make sure they’re not sendin’ me the wrong thing, here.”

Ford sighed, turned back to the keyboard, and did so, bringing it up on the screen.

They both stared at the lyrics.

“...This,” Ford said slowly. “Is... objectively terrible. These people have terrible taste in music.”

“Hey,” said Stan defensively. “You don’t know that. Could be catchy. --Go find some, I dunno, sheet music for it,” he told Ford.

“I should be able to find a way to parse their music files,” Fiddleford told them. “Hoo boy, you should see some of the stuff they’ve got here. Free software -- _open-source_ software, they call it,” Fiddleford told them. “Enough different programming languages to choke a whole barn of horses, and a couple more chickens besides. --Got plenty of our older ones that I recognize,” Fiddleford told them next. “Save me some time, here. I won’t even have to look up the algorithms, to write ‘em myself!”

Stan and Ford looked at each other. “Well, if it looks as though it will save time…” Ford said slowly. He knew how much Fiddleford liked coding for hours on end, which wasn’t very -- he enjoyed making the mechanical elements and electronics and power sources -- the hardware itself -- far more than writing the code that was supposed to run on top of it all.

“Heh,” went Ford’s brother. “Congratulations, All Star is now your favorite song from the movie. Own it.” Ford didn’t quite snap his hand out in time to prevent his brother from tapping the send key.

Ford gave his brother a long dark look.

Stan kept on typing, then burst out laughing at some point.

“What?” Ford asked him, curious, and got back an “Nothin’, nothin’!” from his brother.

Ford looked back upon him with suspicion, and he knew he was going to be in for _something_ or another when Stan finally handed the device back to him after awhile, with a grin and a “Here, I queued it up for you. Got some inventions you should look at first.” 

Ford gave his brother a look, then took a look at the device.

And then sighed.

\--And then _coughed_ next, as he read the message about the tattoo.

“Stanley, I cannot _believe_ that you just implied--!” he told his brother hotly, who just started laughing all over again.

And, after typing out:

\---

Any messages with ‘shrek’ is now filtered out, thank you.

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185716033152/any-messages-with-shrek-is-now-filtered-out)  
\---

\--in an attempt to avoid any further asks on the subject, he instead received _MULTIPLE_ asks, largely in the same vein of…

\---

ANONYMOUS ASKED:  
Man I really love that movie Shrec

You know. I don’t know why I thought that would even remotely work.

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185716058902/man-i-really-love-that-movie-shrec)  
\---

ANONYMOUS ASKED:  
vkuhn

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185716084827/vkuhn)  
\---

And similar.

And these people on the other end of the device just kept sending…

Ford bit his lip after awhile. Because he couldn’t help it. They were _teasing_ him, and… it was almost entirely good-natured. After talking with people on the communications bands for so long, first by only voice, and then largely by text once Fiddleford had better set that system up, he’d grown much more accustomed, and more comfortable with, finding the hidden meaning in anything that he was reading. And what he was reading here was...

...there was no hidden meaning. It was just joy, and teasing, and fun. And… he’d been missing quite a lot of this in his life lately. For a very long time, really.

These people actually… cared about him. They didn’t think he was real, and yet they still seemed to care… They cared that...

\---

ANONYMOUS ASKED:  
Admit it. You missed us idiots.

Prvw ri brx, bhv. Bhv, L kdyh wr dgplw L glg.

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185716124482/admit-it-you-missed-us-idiots)  
\---

...And it was true. He had. He really, really had. It was all color, and light, and their memes.

They were playing with him, yes, but… they weren’t _playing games_ with him, they were all just being… playful.

Ford slowly settled back into his chair.

And he couldn’t help but start to be a little playful back.

\---

ANONYMOUS ASKED:  
Man that shronk movie huh

Don’t make me filter out 20 variations of shrek, ha.

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185716186522/man-that-shronk-movie-huh)  
\---

SCI-FI-HERO ASKED:  
ok, ok, all joking aside: There are gonna be four Shr*k movies. Just thought you should be emotionally prepared.

I don’t think knowing will be able to help with the impending traumatic future, but thank you.

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185716227487/ok-ok-all-joking-aside-there-are-gonna-be-four)  
\---

ANONYMOUS ASKED:  
Shrec, Shronk, Shr3k, Sherk, Shrewk, A Shreek, Shreck,

You’re just giving me items I can add to the list, you know.

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185716245162/shrec-shronk-shr3k-sherk-shrewk-a-shreek)  
\---

Ford looked over one of them in puzzlement, though.

“Stanley,” he said, “Try typing in--”

He had to let out a laugh, as the search engine _self-corrected_ , and the images that popped up were…

“We’re going to have to watch this movie at some point, aren’t we,” Ford told his brother, with a sigh.

“You know it,” Stan grinned back over his shoulder at him.

Ford sent how he truly felt about that in reply.

\---

ANONYMOUS ASKED:  
you'll never catch them all fordquaad

Truly lyme.

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185716258347/youll-never-catch-them-all-fordquaad)  
\---

“What were you doing in the containment chamber, by the way?” Ford asked his brother, as he read through a few more of the incoming messages.

“Found another gnome in there,” Stan told him, and Ford looked up in alarm.

“From the outside?” he asked. Stan shook his head and pointed at the radiation patch he had on his shirt. It wasn’t anything like close to black.

“Dunno how far down they’ve burrowed this time,” Stan told him. “But they must have at least one pretty far down there below.”

“I still can’t imagine how they’ve managed to survive this long,” Ford commented.

“Hey, the unicorns might’a made it through, too,” Stan pointed out. “Nasty little jerks.”

“Well, we’re not going to try summoning the opening to check anything anytime soon,” Ford noted. The unicorns might be jerks, but Ford didn’t feel any urge to straight-up murder them all by letting in the radioactive contaminant still largely saturating the air of the planet above them.

Sadly, neither he nor Fiddleford had yet been able to devise any short- medium- or long-term solution for the radiation problem still-persisting above their heads. They hadn’t even solves the _food_ supply problem yet. (Neither he nor Fiddleford had thought at all to bring down with them any seeds for crops. They’d largely gone with dried and canned goods, and some jars of things pickled for the beginning months and years.)

“Was gonna get a picture for you,” Stan told him. “Almost grabbed his hat and everything. Practically fell on my face when the alarm went off.”

“I fell out of my hammock,” Ford noted. (Stan had quite early expressed a very large lack of desire to share a single cot with him. There had been some ‘spare’ canvas from a tent in one of the back rooms, and with a little strong rope and some duct tape…)

Ford shared a look with his brother, and then they both looked way and chuckled.

“Ah, well,” Ford said, as he typed a [reply](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185716389807/zh-plvvhg-brx-wrr) to a particularly pleasant ask that came in. “I suppose we have time for it.”

“Assuming they don’t try and go digging out too far to the outside again, from in there,” Stan noted. “The things are like cockroaches, but they ain’t that radiation-proof.”

“Not the non-feral ones, anyway,” Ford noted in muted tones.

“Oh, you should hear some of this audio,” Fiddleford said, coming back on the speaker and lowering a pair of headphones from his ears. He’d swapped the screen back to his video feed for the moment, and Ford could see he was grinning from ear-to-ear as he then slapped something on his console.

And music _filled_ the room.

“...I take it back,” Ford said, feeling a little bit choked up. “I very much like this song.”

“Damn,” Stan said, which was _really_ what they’d all been thinking. Because the last time they’d heard music like this...

One of the things that most people who had been building their fallout shelters for, for survival, _hadn’t_ really thought of much more than the basics. _For survival_. Even Fiddleford hadn’t thought to bring down a spare banjo for his own -- he certainly hadn’t had the time or thought for it when he’d been grabbing his family up and making for the emergency hatch below.

And most of the types of people who had thought to bring things like cassette tapes and musical instruments down into their fallout shelters with them? Had been the sort to only stockpile maybe a dozen weeks worth of food for a few people, at most. And maybe forget how much water they actually needed, or were unable to set up their own separate air tank supply.

Sure, there was singing, And yes, banging on wood and on metal for drumming away at things was alright. But… who had thought to bring down books on musical instrument-making? Or sheet music? Or anything-- (And even if they had, then who even had the _time_ anymore to--)

\---

ANONYMOUS ASKED:  
Boy Howdy al ster is my favorite song.

I will go on record to say that it is a good song, and I was a fan of it _prior to the Shrek movie._

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185716436182/boy-howdy-al-ster-is-my-favorite-song)  
\---

He wondered if any one of them might realize what he might be actually trying to say there. But, really, the closest he got was…

Stan pushed his chair over, and glanced down at the message. “Hey, don’t leave it at that. You gotta sell it.”

Ford gave his brother a look.

“C’mon,” Stan said. “Think about it. Some other you, goes out and gets a tattoo like _that_. What was he thinkin’ when he didn’t?”

“Likely, nothing at all,” Ford told his brother dryly.

“Yeah, see?” his brother told him, knocking him in the shoulder gently. “Guy was probably drunk or something. So write _that_ to ‘em,” Stan told him.

Ford gave him another long look, and then...

\---

DARROWWYRLDE ASKED:  
Before you got your glorious tattoo you mean

For all you know there is _**not**_ a tattoo and Stanley is just playing another prank.

Hyhq li wkhuh zdv, L zdvq'w suhflvhob lq wkh prvw ixqfwlrqlqj plqgvhw dw wkh wlph ri wkh ghflvlrq.

[link](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185716499462/before-you-got-your-glorious-tattoo-you-mean)  
\---

Ford contented himself with both telling one truth, and one lie.

“Hey, write down that you need a sec,” Stan told him. “I got an idea.”

Ford [did so](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185716515947/wait-a-second), then lowered the device momentarily. “Yes?”

“So, you know that boring math-y nerdy game that you like to play long-distance with Fiddlenerd?” Stan said almost leadingly.

“...You mean, Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons?” Ford said, having a rather bad feeling for no particular reason that he could think of… other than Stan’s tone of voice.

“Sure, that,” Stan said. “Those things can run for days if you do ‘em right, yeah?”

“Yes?” Ford said, then blinked. “You want me to… run a DDNMD session for them?”

“Yeah,” Stan said. “You think you can do that, here?”

“I…” Ford frowned down at the device. “Do they have the rulebooks? That would take some time to send…”

Stan leaned over and searched. “Nah, doesn’t look like it. Not all that important, though,” he told Ford, who blinked at him, shocked.

“I think it would be,” Ford told him. “How would they be able to play properly, without knowing the rules?”

“Does it matter if they play by the rules?” Stan asked him. “We just gotta keep ‘em interested for a little while longer. Just for a week.”

“I…” Ford rubbed at his eyes. “What sort of scenario do you think that they’d like.”

“Huh, well, that’d kind of the kicker, right?” his brother told him. “I mean, we probably should go with something they already know…”

“...What do you have in mind,” Ford sighed out, because he could see that his brother already did have something in mind.

“Us.”

Ford blinked, and looked up at his brother. “...Us?” he repeated.

“Yeah,” said Stanley. “Us.”

Ford stared at his brother, and he felt himself go a little pale.

“...But we’re not a game,” Ford said slowly, and rather carefully. “Our lives are not a game.”

“They don’t know that,” Stanley told him.

There was dead silence for a long moment.

“No,” said Ford. He wasn’t entirely sure what his brother was asking but… no. This didn’t feel right.

“They already think that we’re not real, Ford,” Stanley told him. “So, just give ‘em something _more_ not real to work with.”

“I… I don’t…” Ford began.

“C’mon, Ford, it ain’t really lying.” Ford looked away from him. _Now_ he knew what his brother was up to; he was trying to find a way to make it easy for him to lie to these people, that might actually work. “Think about it. Fiddlenerd's always saying you’re the best at that DM’ing the game thing. So just… y’know, think up a scenario. What would it be like, if the whole stupid explosion thing never happened. --And go from there,” Stan told him.

“I wouldn’t know where to start, even if I wanted to,” Ford told him tersely.

“Start with tellin’ ‘em I’m on the phone, talking to somebody,” Stan told him. “Every good story starts with a hook, right? The Pines twins, getting called in because something-something,” Stan enthused at him, with a grin on his face.

“I don’t want to lie to them anymore, Stanley,” Ford told him. “I’m not sure I can do it.”

“Look,” Stan told him, “It ain’t really lying. You’re just givin’ them what they want. They want a good story, and they’re all think they’re playing a game that’s not real, where nobody really gets hurt. So, you just give ‘em a game that’s not real, and they’re happy. Simple.”

“What would we even talk about,” Ford told him. “This wouldn’t be a normal DDNMD session. They _always_ get off-track, with all their memeing and questions and jokes…”

“So? Let ‘em. You can let them do it at their own pace,” Stan told him. “So what if it takes longer?”

“But that’s not--” Ford looked over at his brother, who was giving him a look like he thought...

“You can’t just have fun with it, Ford?” Stan asked him, and Ford had to look away from his brother for a moment, suddenly feeling every single year of his age.

Ford let out a sigh.

And after awhile, he looked over at his brother again.

And he looked down at the device, and Ford…

\---

**Author's Note:**

> AN:
> 
>  
> 
> [...](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185716552957/someones-been-paralyzed-or-similar-stanley-is-on)
> 
>  
> 
> [...](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185716680637/paralyzed)
> 
>  
> 
> [...](https://whatwouldteslado.tumblr.com/post/185716721652/update-to-follow-later-apologies-for-the-sudden)


End file.
